‘How is he?’ Miri asks once Bertie is out of earshot.
‘He’s Bertie. Nothing bothers him for long. He’s over it already . . .’ She trails off again, staring after her brother. ‘I told you about the dog. He wept like a baby for a few hours, then it was like it never happened. Same with our grandmother . . . He . . . he processes things differently . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘I hate him for that.’
Miri doesn’t reply, but waits as Bertie goes into the shack, getting caught in the doorframe by the bag on his shoulder, then spending a full minute trying to figure out how to fit both himself and the bag through at the same time.
‘It’s not a bad hate,’ Ria adds into the quiet, glancing at Miri. ‘Not a bitter hate. I just wish I could . . .’ The last words choke off with the memory of her mother trying to run through the house amidst the carnage.
Miri rests a hand on her shoulder. Grief is powerful, and it must be given time to vent and play out. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ she says quietly before walking off.
The shack isn’t a shack at all, but a timber-built summerhouse. It was a flat-pack self-build Miri bought from a huge home construction depot in California. Before that, Ria and Bertie had a large canvas army tent, but Miri knew that having a solid structure would help them settle and give Ria something to think about.
Miri had collected the summerhouse with Doctor Watson. Two older people making a purchase together drew no attention. They used a hire truck to get it to the waiting Blue, hidden in the countryside; then they brought Harry, Ben and Safa through to help carry it on to the island. The whole exercise served many purposes. It introduced them all again and enforced the knowledge that Ria and Bertie were safe and being cared for.
Bertie was thrilled to see them and talked non-stop of the things he had seen during the days on the island. He was clearly drawn to Ben and Harry, and told them about how he spent the nights like, totally mapping constellations with Ria. Bertie even followed them back through the portal to the bunker to help carry the lumber, without a flicker of a glance at anything. He was so enraptured in telling them what he had seen that it just did not occur to him to look round or question where they were. He made the time machine and had used it many times, so it was nothing new to him. He just followed them in and out until the lumber was stacked. Two minutes later, he had forgotten they were even there as he started sorting the wood and tools.
The shack was built within two days. It was built perfectly too.
Over the course of the two weeks, Ria and her brother had asked for very little in terms of supplies. Ria because of shock and grief, Bertie because he just didn’t think of anything. Miri leaves them plenty of food, drink, reading materials and essentials. They are both washing. Bertie is shaving, and they are eating.
Bertie has the same height and build as Roland, and the same dark hair, but whereas Roland normally kept his lacquered and neat, Bertie pays no heed and lets it stand up wild and unruly. It suits him though. Even now, walking barefoot round an island with his top off and wearing baggy shorts, he looks entirely at ease.
For her part, Ria has the same dark hair but the facial features of her mother. A large girl, bookish and geeky-looking. Awkward, and seemingly always bordering on embarrassment.
‘Is that a chair?’ Miri asks, looking at the item in Bertie’s hands, then round at the stripped electrical products she’d previously brought him. Spools of wire wrapped around thick twigs in order of size and usability. Piles of component parts, and the cases stacked neatly to one side.
‘I made it for you,’ he says, rushing to carry the wooden chair over. Tree branches for legs and left-over planks from the summerhouse used for the seat and backrest. ‘For your bad back,’ he adds, nodding earnestly.
‘Thanks.’
Bertie carefully adjusts the angle of the chair and checks the position of the sun, before he spots the bag he dropped and runs off to rifle through the contents. The chair is surprisingly comfortable. ‘Very good,’ she says. He doesn’t reply, but acts like a child on Christmas Day. Giddy with pleasure and happiness at the bundle of presents.
‘That’ll keep him happy,’ Ria says, walking up to them. She sits on the ground and leans her back against the side of the summerhouse. ‘Debriefing again?’
‘Do you mind?’ Miri asks.
‘Carry on,’ Ria says quietly. ‘How many times do we have to do it?’
‘As many as necessary. Bertie, I’ll start with you.’
‘Okay,’ Bertie mumbles, examining an old transistor radio as if it holds the secret to immortality, which it may well do to him.
So it begins and again the contrast with Roland could not be starker. Bertie speaks as though this is the first time they have discussed the subject, while also picking up tools and starting to work on the old radio.
His father died and he decided to build a time machine, so that families can go back and ask their loved ones not to kill themselves. That’s it. That was his sole motivation for building a thing that so many others had only dreamt of. It’s all just binary. Everything is binary. He has access to a secret language made of zeros and ones. A language that holds the mystery of the universe, but in order to have that access, his brain has to be wired differently. Miri considers autism and a range of spectrum disorders, but it’s impossible to label Bertie. She thought of asking Ria if he had ever been diagnosed or tested, but held back. Ria hadn’t volunteered the information, and it made no difference anyway.
Bertie built the device in his basement workshop, and once built, he applied the laws of scientific research by conducting tests to ensure it was working properly. During that time, he popped in and out of several different eras. All of which fascinated him at the time, but it is now just something he once did. He recounts how he walked through ancient Rome for half an hour smiling at people who like, were so totally friendly, but, like, all really short, but like not midgets or anything.
What staggers Miri is that he went into the future. He had access to advanced technology and scientific awareness, but paid no attention to it because that would be like, cheating, and anyway, it wasn’t what he was there for. It was on the second test jump to the year 2111 that he discovered the world was, like, broke. Like, totally ruined. He panicked, and assumed he had caused it. She asked him what he saw. He said he went through the portal, saw it was bad, then went back into his workshop to find his drone and used that to film it all. She wanted to ask if he checked radiation levels or saw any signs of what caused it, but avoided doing so to prevent planting ideas or false memories, being unsure of his level of grasp until she knew him better.